


John Watson is Definitely in Danger

by The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, His Last Vow Spoilers, M/M, Mind Palace, Missing Scene, Sherlock Kink Meme, possible johnlock - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-09 04:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1141624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting/pseuds/The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has a room in his mind palace dedicated to John. He goes there during His Last Vow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	John Watson is Definitely in Danger

**Author's Note:**

> So I had this idea directly after watching His Last Vow. Theeen I got some encouragement from a friend, and THEN I saw a similar prompt over on the kink meme and decided now was a good time to write this fic.

It is the one room of his mind palace that Sherlock never, ever cleans. In the physical world he is untidy enough to frequently drive Mrs Hudson, John and anyone else who enters 221B Baker Street to despair. Other things in his life take precedence over tidiness. But in his mind palace, it’s a different matter entirely. In his mind palace, Sherlock is meticulous. He has to be.

He adds rooms, and rooms grow and merge or shrink and divide. If a room gets too full, cluttered with the unnecessary, Sherlock spring cleans. He deletes what is no longer needed. On the rare occasion things bleed into the wrong parts of his mind palace without his bidding, he orders those memories, those thoughts, back into their rightful place. Not a single room is spared his frequent purging of the superfluous.

Except one.

And it is this room he goes to now.

It is the highest room in his mind palace. Right at the very top of the stair case that he imported here from Lauriston Gardens. (He ignores the part of his brain that tells him that staircase is unnecessary sentiment. It’s practicality, really. He works far better if the areas of his mind palace are based on real places. That’s all it is.)

In his mind he crawls his way up those stairs. He forces his way one painful, exhausting movement at a time as somewhere else he lies in a hospital bed, his heart restarting. Life pours back into him as he sinks deeper into himself. It’s like that room has him on a string and it’s reeling him in one quarter inch at a time. His hand closes on the door handle as the doctors establish a steady pulse again. 

Sherlock’s mind palace has courtrooms and bedrooms, prison cells and mortuaries. This room is a replica of the living room at Baker Street.

A fire is lit, two chairs pulled up close to its warmth. A figure rises from one chair to greet Sherlock. 

“Well it’s about time you showed up.” Says John.

Sherlock nearly collapses in the doorway but those words and the smile that goes with them give him the strength to make it into the room. 

It was the thought of John’s name that had pulled him back. The prospect of John being in danger. Of course the first place he would go to would be John’s room.

There had been a time where John had crept his way into every corner of Sherlock’s mind palace. Every room came complete with its own version of John. It was rare indeed for anyone to make their way into Sherlock’s mind palace without Sherlock expressly placing them there. It was rarer still for one person to fill it so completely. 

It had gotten to be quite a problem. Sherlock could not concentrate on anything without some element of John making his presence known. His voice or his face or his scent.  It was of course helpful to have John’s input some of the time, but Sherlock nearly always had the real version of John to do that. This fantasy version served as a distraction. And Sherlock had one way of dealing with distractions in his mind palace.

But Sherlock could not get rid of John. 

Instead he had built this room for him; a place where every aspect of John could exist. Every case they had ever solved was here, every conversation they had ever spoken, every moment shared. They were in the diagrams and pictures and notes that lined the walls like paper. This room was never cleaned, it only ever grew.  

Sherlock had forgotten how warm this room was. A chill that had crept inside him as shock hit is slowly receding. Or maybe that just his body’s reaction to having blood once more pumping through its veins. 

He sinks into his chair and, moments later, is joined by John. This John does not sit as the real John might. He wraps his arms around Sherlock’s seated form and holds him close.

“Thought I was going to lose you there.” Says John. He is more solid and real than the hospital room. Sherlock rests against him and listens to the heartbeat that logic tells him is his own, but that his mind chooses to interpret as John’s. 

“Sorry to have worried you.” Sherlock replies. John laughs and places a kiss on Sherlock’s forehead. He strokes Sherlock’s hair and his wedding ring catches. (Sherlock really does not delete _any_ part of John).

John talks to Sherlock. He soothes him. 

 It’s only when Sherlock regains consciousness properly, three days later, that he finds out that the real John has been by his bedside talking to him almost constantly. He’s not sure which words that made it into his mind palace were real, and which were imagined. But he could swear that kiss was real.

Real or imagined, it’s John who keeps him going. 

Sherlock spends the majority of his recovery in that room. Morphine makes the real world fuzzy, but it makes his mind palace stronger. That’s just fine with Sherlock. While the real John is away, there’s no other place he’d rather be.


End file.
